Tuesday, 14 February 2017

These are notes from a lecture by Sriram Venkatakrishnan on
December 17, 2016, for the South Indian Cultural Heirtage Series, at Tag
Center, on Kanchi. Sriram lectures twice every year in December at Tag Center
on Carnatic musician. He has authored the book Carnatic Summers, a brilliant
collection of essays on musicians and The Devadasi and the Saint, on Bangalore
Nagarathnammal and her adoration of Thyagaraja, the doyen of Carnatic
composers, and the most prolific of the Tiruvaiyaru Trinity. Sriram writes a
column for The Hindu and in the Madras Musings besides several other
periodicals.

I have attended at least fifty lectures by Sriram over the last 13
years, since I first heard him speak the Madras Day festivities in 2004, and
every one has been a gem. I have also attended perhaps thirty Heritage Walks
conducted by him, all of which have been thoroughly entertaining and incredibly
informative. He writes more prolifically than I could dream of. I had never
heard of Naina Pillai, clearly a vital person in the history of Carnatic music.
And the Kanchi Kailasanatha connection was too good to pass up.

----------

Sriram V on Kanchi Naina Pillai

Subramaniam Pillai, popularly known as Kanchi Naina Pillai had no
interest in music until the age of 17, even though he belonged to a musical
family. The son of singer Mettu Kamatchi, whose sister Dhanakoti, was also a
singer - the sisters often performed together. His pet name 'Naina' stuck to
him during his career as a musician too.

He was transformed by a visit to the Kanchi Kailasanatha temple,
when an unknown person turned him away from his passion for wrestling, weight
lifting, cock fighting, pigeon fighting. He practiced in the temple all day
long. Pillai's Arangerram took place in Anekatangavadam temple very close to the
Kailasanatha temple.

Pillai married two women, Kuppammal and Kuttiammal.

When Pillai visited Chennai, mathematician and musician, he heard
Konerirajapuram Vaidyanatha Iyer sing at the Tondai Mandala Vellala Sabha in
Mint, Chennai. This concert entranced Naina. Konerirajapuram Vaidyanatha
Iyer became the idol and role model for Naina Pillai.

Naina Pillai, in turn, later became a manaseeka guru for DK
Pattammaal.

Mannargudi Konnakol Pakkiriya Pillai, a tavil artist who played
for nadasvaram artist Mannargudi Pakkiri, his wife Pakkiri ammal and othu was
also played by a Pakkiri, gave up tavil and was adviced by Naina Pillai to take
up Konnakol. Konnakol is a technique wherein the artist mimics a percussion
instrument with the human voice (pardon the simplification). Naina Pillai
admired the voice culture and rhythm sense of Pakkiriya Pillai.

Naina Pillai often had full bench concerts, with upto eleven
artists performing. Including Kanjira by stalwarts like Pudukottai
Dakshinamarthy Pillai, double Violin, Tampura, Mridangam, Gottuvadyam,
Konnakol. The tani aavartanam must have been quite a musical feast for the
aficionado.

After Chembai 's success, Naina, who sang only in Tamil, became a
huge hit in Gokhale hall, which could seat 1500 people in era before microphones.
And whole audience could hear listen to his deep voice. Pillaw was 5'9",
which was very tall for a South Indian in 1920s.

There are no recordings of Naina Pillai. He took practice
seriously and it was rarely a solo act. Practice meant playing four or five
hours with full accompaniment!

He learnt Tirupugazh from two people, whom he would teach Thevaram
in turn. He took a train to learn one song from a person, because he
liked it so much. Veena Dhanammal was a close friend of Kanchi Dhanakoti ammal,
his aunt. And Naina Pillai learnt Thyagaraja kritis from Veena Dhanammal's
patron Ramanaiya Chetty. Over time Naina learnt several Thyagaraja kritis and
performed them.

Performers of the Thyagaraja aradhana in Tiruvaiyaaru split into
two factions, the Periya Katchi and Chinna Katchi, the former becoming a non
Brahmin group in Kumbakonam, the latter a Brahmin group in Tiruvaiyaru. Kanchi
Naina was popular with Periya Katchi but broke up with them and later organized
his own aradhana in Kanchipuram. A wholesale merchant from Erode, EV Ramaswami
Naicker, sent funds for the concerts he organized.

His student Kittur Venkata Naidu was named Kittur Subramania
Pillai, which was Naina 's original name, by Naina himself!

One of his best friends was Tiger Varadachariar, whom he called
Tigervaal, both deeply interested in music, more than accolades.

In the early years of the Music Academy, they said they would pay
Naina Pillai a reduced amount because they were an Academy not a Sabha. Naina
refused to perform for the Academy after that. Once hid his taalam hand under
angavastram and Palghat Mani Iyer stopped playing Mridangam.

In 1930 Pillai was afflicted with diabetes and tuberculosis. There
was no cure for either in those days. Pillai performed less and less and money
dwindled. He refused to record his music, offended that it would be
played in barbershops and tea shops and that was lowering dignity of Carnatic
music.

He also refused all titles offered to him, saying his guru was a
pandaram and paradesi who had no titles, and he didn't need a title either.

Lost Potential

Naina Pillai's career was contemporary with Ariyakudi Ramanuja
Iyengar, who started a new trend in Carnatic music. Naina was the last of a
different era, a different style. One can only imagine how the Carnatic field
would have been, if he had lived a couple of decades longer.

All there is today to honor him is a Sangeeta Vidvan Naina Pillai
street, in Kanchipuram.

Tuesday, 7 February 2017

Charles C Mann spoke about his book 1493, at the MS Swaminathan
Research Foundation on 9 December, 2016. These are my notes from that lecture.

----

There was once a geological era, about 300 million years ago, when all
the continents of the Earth were united into a single supercontinent, called Pangaea. Later this continent split up, forming the continents we have today,
primarily separating into two large land masses – the Americas on one side and
Eurasia and Africa on the other side, separated by the Atlantic ocean one way
and the Pacific the other. These two oceans passed huge species barriers. When Columbus
sailed from Spain to the Carribean, in 1492, he effectively recreated (or
reunited) Pangaea – his ships and its successors bridged the Atlantic, thus
providing for a massive biologcal exchange.Animals, plants and germs from Eurasia traveled into Americas. Alfred
Crosby coined term Columbian exchange to describe this.

No domesticated animals like cattle sheep goats chicken horses or
equivalent in existed in the Americas, in 1492. This triggered a massive
epidemiological imbalance – the native epidemic diseases of Europe were more
numerous and more deadly than those of the Americas, and caused a massive
genocide of Native Americans, i.e. Red Indians, who had no immunity to European
diseases.

The Cold Snap in Europe from 1550s to 1750s, was followed by Dutch
paintings of children skating on iced over rivers in April. These rivers have
not iced up in the recent two centuries. The massive death of people in the
Americas, meant they stopped cutting trees to burn them, so forests grew back
and sucked out so much Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, that they caused the
Cold Snap, a mini Ice Age. (This is usually not mentioned in newspaper reports
about Global Warming).

Europe was poor while China India and Ottomans were rich, until Silver
was discovered in South America by Spaniards, mostly in Peru. In fact they
discovered a hills of silver.This trebled the world supply of silver. Europe
could now buy Asian goods with their silver.

Wheat went from Europe to the Americas and potatoes and chilis
from the Americas to Europe. Mann shows photographs of wheat farms, then says,
he talked to a group in New York and had to explain that this was wheat -
they've never seen farms or wheat plants!

Mann then showed photos of the several varieties of potatoes that
are sold in the Andes, to which they are native. He couldn’t believe they were
all potato varieties! Neither can we! Ridge and furrows system of ploughing, with
snow in furrows suitable for potatoes. Europe and eastern USA are more suitable
for potatoes than Andes. This caused a food revolution - Europe could
feed itself for the first time ever.

Potato varieties in the Andes!

Suddenly Europe had more stable governments, since there were no
hungry mobs. Potato was the fuel of European empires, said Mann. We don’t usually
consider the political implications of vegetables; its not something that seems
to interest historians.

In the 1840s, Europeans
discovered islands off the coast of Peru with 200 feet of guano (bat and bird
dung), which had very high nitrogen content, and were extremely popular as
fertilizer. These mounds of guano were mined by Chinese slaves –this was the
beginning of a European green revolution.

Potato blight killed million people in 1845, then another million in 1846.
Ireland was worst affected. This was the last major famine before the invention of photography.

Indian culinary history is not as well developed as it should be
given its culinary greatness. Gujarati traders probably brought in some crops
from Africa, not just Portuguese.

China is a country that has to grow rice with almost no flat land
and very little water. China has only only 7% of world's fresh water, but
grows water hungry crops anyway! Maize is grown all over western China in terraced
hills - this began only in the 18th century and is very much an ecological
disaster!!!

China still trying to recover from the introduction of American
crops in 1850s. India politically fragmented, so such crop adoption was not
uniform. But everything was and is done top down in China, so a bad political
decision can have an impact that lasts quite long.

Malaria was gifted to Americas via the Columbian exchange.
Plasmodium, the germ that causes malaria, can hide in liver or spleen of
healthy human for years and then suddenly resurge. It hides in red blood cells
where immune system cant detect it and spreads all over body.

Central and West
Africans have more immunity against Falciparum than any other people. Also
against yellow fever. Falciparum thrives in tropics, can't handle temperate
zones. During the Colonial era, there was a Parliamentary enquiry in Lodon- why
British soldiers died in African territories (but not so much in the Americas)?
The answer was lack of genetic immunity against African diseases.

Adam Smith asked why slavery existed? Indentured workers were quite
common in Europe until slavery was introduced, which wiped out Indentured Labor.
Mann posits that Malarial Immunity helped growth of slavery - living slaves
were better than dead indentured workers, and since Africans who had the genes
to resist malaria outlasted the white and native American population who had
almost no immunity against these diseases, germs and genes played a major role
in the continuance of slavery.

MS Swaminathan and Charles C Mann at the MSSRF

Dr MS Swaminathan
added that most Indian food crops like rice wheat mango are not of Indian
origin. Globalization of natural resources and husbandry can be quite
beneficial for everyone, not just create a system of winners and losers. He congratulated
Charles Mann for an excellent speech and excellent pictures, and the wonderful
book 1493.

Gopu’s Notes

1. The theory of Tectonic plates and Pangaea are recent
developments in Geology

2. Alfred Russel Wallace discovered a species barrier with no
seeming geographic logic, in the islands of Indonesia. This is now called the
Wallace line.

3. The discovery of guano islands off Peru is a major part of Thomas
Hager’s book The Alchemy of Air,
which then goes on to describe the Haber Bosch process for producing artificial nitrogen fertilizer.

4. Jared Diamond’s book Guns,
Germs and Steel examines the inequal epidmeological consequences of one aspect of the Columbian
exchange and its ultimate causes. I strongly recommend this book.

5. Carbon dioxide and global warming are the reason why Life (and clouds) exists on earth – as opposed to the barrenness of Mars.

6. On the positive side, Mankind is winning the war against diseases. Almost all diseases are on the retreat. This is wonderful news, which doesn't sell magazines or ads, so it won't make it to headlines or public knowledge.

7. Mann's malarial hypothesis of slavery is quite original. But history may be a bit more complicated than that. Indian indentured labor became quite popular when slavery was finally abolished in the British Empire and its colonies, before abolition in the USA. Slavery was not entirely about farm labour, either.